daylight savings

a little boy asks me at the bus-stop, “comment-t’appelle tu?” he is four fingers old & would like to see the apricot tart that I tell him I have in my bag. we talk about skateboards, school, & rubber boots, but he knows straight away that I am English: my grammar & soft accent admits a certain foreignness, a not-quite-comfort with my past tense.

a sturdy old man with long, dark eyelashes pushes his hands into my naked belly; I lay on the table cordoned off by peach curtains & he guesses that the tension I carry in my abdomen comes from fights with my mother & my tense past.

new hours - undiscovered, undocumented, unplanned for - are secreted from the afternoon & make this day full of stolen time. minute hands get mixed up in my fingers & the sunlight slips from the purple glass. tonight, we burn daylight.